Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Introduce yourself to the community or chat with other users about whatever is on your mind
TheDenizen
Posts: 1638
0 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:51 pm

Re: Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Post by TheDenizen »

Dub is only acceptable to me if it's a cheap martial arts movie from the 70s and the dub is comically awful.

Otherwise I always prefer to watch a movie in its original language with subtitles. Here's why: A large number of voice over/dub actors are goddamn terrible, and I always feel that I get a better sense of the characters if I'm hearing the actual voices of the actors in the film, even if I don't understand their language. Tone, inflection, breathing, etc communicate a lot all by themselves, and dubs rarely convey that consistently.

Neonman
Posts: 122
0 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:35 am

Re: Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Post by Neonman »

Subs, otherwise you're removing about a half of the actors' performances. It's only really acceptable if it's a terrible film that benefits from terrible dubbing (like Story of Riki), or maybe if it's a foreign language animation though I still might want to use subs with them if people say the foreign voices are better than the English dub

livelove
Posts: 759
0 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:36 pm

Re: Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Post by livelove »

wow, so many excellent thoughts.
Thank you everyone for your wonderful participation.

Jerky
Posts: 253
125 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2010 10:37 pm

Re: Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Post by Jerky »

Subtitles

Why...because that's how the film was made. You're watching the original content that just so happens to have words at the bottom. Nothing else about the film is changed.

Dubbed films add people who are not even in the film, to your film, aka, foreign voice actors. Also, a lot of times, background music and sounds are changed as well. This is no longer the original director's work.

Plus most dubbing is trash.


I can accept dubbing for animated films and cartoons though (but I'd prefer to watch it in it's original form first)

JSchlansky
Posts: 1514
595 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 12:58 am

Re: Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Post by JSchlansky »

Always subtitles, except I agree with cheesy martial dubs getting a pass. An additional reason to what's already been mentioned...

The dub is not cast or directed by the original film's director. The actual director has no involvement at all in the dubbing process that vast-vast majority of the time so their imprint and guidance in terms of performance can be lost vocally. Also, one school of dubbing thought involves altering lines in terms of word-count i.e. length, in order to better match lip flaps. While this might make the out-of-sync mouth movements less distracting, it also changes the content of the scripted dialogue

livelove
Posts: 759
0 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:36 pm

Re: Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Post by livelove »

excellent points, thank you

Jess0062
Posts: 6
Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2019 1:46 pm

Re: Do you prefer dubbings or subtitles ?

Post by Jess0062 »

Subtitles... 100%.

I almost can't even watch a movie that's dubbed.

Post Reply